Quiller Meridian

Chapter 17: LIGHTS

Ferris caught it before the second ring.

"Things went off all right,' I told him.

In a moment he said: 'I'll tell London.'

He just meant he was pleased, that was all, because he hadn't believed I'd got a ghost of a chance of going into Militia Headquarters and coming out again of my own free will. There was nothing in point of fact to tell London. The purpose of the exercise had been to stop Captain Vadim Rusakov from going down there and offering himself as the sacrificial lamb in order to get his sister out. I needed him.

I hadn't advanced the mission; I'd simply averted the terminal damage that Tanya had come appallingly close to causing when she'd walked out of that safe-house in spite of my warning. But that was something, at least; we hadn't crashed Meridian, though it wasn't the kind of signal the director in the field could flash to Control in London.

Novosibirsk's just come in, sir. We've still got a mission running.

Croder would freeze him with his obsidian eyes.

How nice.

We're expected to do rather better than that, we the brave and underpaid ferrets in the field. But I had felt something move softly within when I'd seen her look back, just that once, before she'd vanished into the trees of the little park; you could call it joy of some kind, I suppose, or as close as I can ever get to such a thing inside the cold and scaly carapace of my defences.

As close as I'll let myself get? You read well, my good friend, between the lines.

'I blew the safe-house,' I told Ferris. 'It was full of militia when I left there.'

'They were looking for you?'

'Yes.'

'What's your location now?'

'I'm about three miles away, at Iskitim Prospekt and — wait a minute.' the glass panels were steaming up.' Iskitim Prospekt and Borodin ulica. And I've got the car here.' I'd just walked across the patch of waste ground where I'd left the Skoda earlier this afternoon. 'You've got Tanya in safe keeping?'

'Here at the hotel.'

'For God's sake try and make her understand,' I said,'that if she goes off on her own again we won't be able to help her.'

Lights swept across the telephone booth and I turned my back until they'd gone. I wouldn't have long: they'd be spreading the hunt.

'She's hating herself,' Ferris said. 'Feels she let you down.'

'Then maybe she's learned.' I tried to remember the names of the major intersections east of here, but a lot had gone on since I'd studied the map of the city on board the Rossiya. 'Look, I'm still a bit too close to things at the moment, so I'm going to start driving eastwards from here as soon as we shut down. Have I got a new safe-house?'

'Yes. Nothing posh.'

'I'll take anything. I need someone to intercept and lead me there. You should also send someone to the Harbour Light Bar on the river.' I gave him the location. 'Captain Rusakov should be going there in a couple of minutes from now.' I repeated the description Rusakov had given me of himself and told Ferris about the recognition mark: the odd pair of gloves. 'He should be told as soon as possible that his sister's free and in safe keeping and that I'll meet him there as soon as I can. Where's the safe-house?'

I could hear the faint crackling of a map on the line. 'Five kilometres from the Harbour Light, downstream on the river.'

'What sort of place is it?'

In a moment, 'It's an abandoned hulk. We didn't have much time to find anything better.'

'No problem.'

But it wasn't good news. If the best the director in the field could find for his executive was an abandoned hulk on the river it meant that the local support people were not only spread thin on the ground but couldn't come up with anything safer. It was the nearest they could get, I suppose, to a bloody cellar.

'There'll be a change of clothes for me there?' I asked Ferris. The collar of the uniform was rough and my neck had started itching.

'Clothes,' Ferris said, 'food, oil stove, oil lamp, bedding, the usual supplies.'

There hadn't been a trace of satisfaction in his tone but I said, 'More than I could have hoped for, considering.'

'Thank you.'

'Look, I'm still a major target and they'll start spreading out from the safe-house the minute they find out I'm not there, so I want to get off the streets as soon as I can. Let Rusakov know that I'll try and meet him at the Harbour Light by nine o'clock.'

'Noted.'

'And tell the support man I'll start driving east from Borodin ulica along Iskitim in two minutes from now and I'll expect him to flash me when he intercepts.'

Ferris acknowledged and we shut down the signal and I shouldered the door of the booth open against the heavy spring and waited until a dark blue van went past with only the left headlight going; then I walked across the street to the patch of waste ground and got into the Skoda. The clock on the dash was three minutes slow and I adjusted it to read 8:02 and started the engine and moved off along Borodin, sitting with my neck forward a degree to keep it clear of my collar, not my collar in point of fact, the whole outfit belonged to the sallow-faced and brutish-looking militiaman who'd come sliding in there an hour after I'd finalized the deal with that fat stinking bitch.

She'd looked shocked at first when I'd told her what I wanted, sitting there like a great female Buddha in her rusty black satin dress, her rings glinting on her fat fingers and her mouth hanging open: 'But I couldn't ever do such a thing!' she'd get arrested and shot, so forth, hamming it up because she'd already scented money in it, perhaps quite a lot if she played hard to get.

I'd had to start from there.

'But they come in here, don't they? The militia? Just for a quickie?'

'It has happened,' she said cautiously.

'All right, I'll give you three hundred roubles for the uniform off the first militiaman my size who comes in here, the hat and the boots included, the whole kit. Three hundred.'

The huge Ottoman chair creaked as she shifted her weight in it, settling herself for the struggle. 'How could I possibly get such a thing for you?'

'Oh come on, Marina, how long have you been running a whorehouse? Tell him it's your birthday, give him two or three girls and a bottle of vodka and slip in a Mickey Finn.'

Her fleshy mouth opened in shock. 'You want me arrested?'

Rhetoric. I didn't answer.

'Can you imagine what they would charge me with? Physical assault on an officer of the law, attempted — '

'Bullshit He couldn't tell them where it had happened, you know that. Tell them he'd gone into a brothel and got drunk on duty and they'd give him a year in the brig.'

Her right foot began tapping on the stained Kazakhstan carpet. 'And how would I get him out of here? You expect me to — '

'Wrap him in a blanket and dump him into a taxi.'

She looked as if I'd gone out of my mind, and the price went up another hundred.

'And how would he ever find another uniform?'

She couldn't care less but I said, 'He'd buy one or steal one.'

The door from the street opened and a man came in, turning to look behind him before he shut the door, a gross creature with the veins on his face broken into a purple network and one eye dulled, unseeing, the other too bright by far, too hungry.

Marina jerked her head and the man parted the slit in the heavy red curtains and pushed his way through them. I have Chinese girls, this woman had told me, thirteen, fourteen years old. You should see them. They are like porcelain.

But this is a man's world, my little slant-eyed alabaster loves, and there's no hope in it for the likes of you. 'I'm waiting,' I told the woman, and though I'd said it quietly I saw a leap of fear in her eyes at something she heard in my tone.

'It's too big a risk,' she told me.

'Five hundred.'

'I would lose my licence.'

'One thousand,' I told her, 'take it or leave it.'

I'd given her cash and she'd counted it and it had been an hour before the sallow-faced militiaman had come through the door, and now I could smell the vodka on his uniform as I drove east along Iskitim, watching the mirror, a blade of freezing air cutting through a gap where the window-rubber had rotted away, the heater pushing oil fumes into the car from the engine compartment, the mirror trembling to the vibration.

Two militia patrols, both coming past from the opposite direction, two militia patrols and a bus crowded with fur hats and featureless faces behind the steamy windows, a truck lurching half across the pavement to keep out of its way, ten blocks, eleven, twelve, and support still hadn't intercepted. A dog loped into the roadway and I felt the bump and the front end of the Skoda slid across the ruts in the snow and I brought it back again, thirteen blocks, fourteen, until I could see the red lights winking at the top of the radio masts where the land rose towards the river and fell away again.

He found me at the twentieth block and flashed me and I put a hand up to steady the mirror and took a look at him and slowed and let him go past and took up station fifty yards behind him; he was in a two-door Trabant with most of the paint gone and a strip of adhesive tape slanting across the rear window and one of the tail lights flickering; nothing posh, as Ferris would have said, dear Jesus, I was beginning to realize the kind of operation London had thrown that man to direct in the field — Meridian was not your fancy West European parlour game with elite-status supports and backups and courier lines and signals facilities by courtesy of the British embassies in Berlin, Paris and Rome; this was a strictly cut-price package trip through the frozen hinterland of Siberia at a time when even the dogs were too thin to be thought worth catching for the pot.

Something came into the mirror and I held it steady and saw the front-end profile of a truck against the glare of its lights. I was checking it from habit, that was all, because the rogue agent I suspected was in the field may have been interested in me on board the Rossiya and could have closed up on my movements since I'd arrived in Novosibirsk, but when I'd taken Tanya Rusakova under my protection after the Velichko killing I'd gone through the rest of the night in a complex travel-pattern that no one could have tracked unseen, and when Roach had picked us up at the hospital in the Skoda we'd been absolutely clean, I knew that. So lights in the mirror now wouldn't mean anything, but we always check them, we the paranoid ferrets in the field, with a devotion to ritual worthy of a priest.

The Trabant turned south and east again and the mirror went dark. I found the switch for the heater and turned it off. The air inside the car was thick with oil fumes and I cracked the window open on the passenger's side. Another militia patrol car passed me, this time at right angles across an intersection. I didn't know if they'd taken the name of Shokin, Viktor off the all-points bulletin board at Militia Headquarters when I'd reported there, but it wouldn't make any difference because by now they would have taken that whole building apart where the safe-house was and set up the hunt again and put my name back on the board. It didn't worry me: at this point I was running unseen and within reach of shelter and my main concern was to get out of this bloody uniform. But I mustn't complain: it had served me well.

I'd asked that elephantine harpy for something to carry the uniform in when I'd left the brothel and she'd given me a brown paper bag, and I'd put the whole kit still unwrapped in the wardrobe of the safe-house and left it there when I'd gone to find a militia patrol and turn myself in. When I was taken back there under escort I'd told Colonel Belyak to give me fifteen minutes before he sent his troops in but it hadn't taken that long to get into the uniform, and I'd stowed my clothes under the handbasin in the bathroom and was down the stairs before the headlights of the vehicles outside came flooding through the windows and I heard a chorus of shouted commands.

I was in a janitor's room at the end of the main corridor on the ground floor when they hit the entrance doors open and filled the place with the clatter of boots.

I gave them time.

There was a picture on the wall of the room where I was waiting, a faded photograph of former President Gorbachev of the USSR being greeted at the airport in Novosibirsk by girls in white skirts belled out around them as their leader presented a huge bouquet of flowers. One little girl, among the youngest, stood watching the presentation with a contemplative finger up her nose, which I thought gave the whole scene a unique charm.

'Plekhanov, take the stairs!'

By the sound of their boots the corridor was filling up and I could hear doors opening and a woman's shrill voice and then a man's, demanding to know what was going on, and I waited until the first wave had passed the janitor's room and then went out and joined the tail of the advance group and started hammering on doors, telling people it was the militia, open up.

The vanguard of the group on the ground floor was spilling at right angles into a passage leading to the yard outside: I'd checked the layout of the building after Roach had left us here this morning.

'Kuibyshev, take your men into the yard and stake out the perimeter and leave two men guarding that door!'

I went out with the main group and took up station by the gate.

The whole street on the far side of the building was a blaze of light as the militia vehicles were brought in from the surrounding streets by radio to complete the total containment of the area, and through the ground-floor windows I could make out the civilian residents of the apartment block being lined up for questioning.

'Open this gate!'

People banging at it from the other side. I didn't do anything; we'd need a sergeant to order it done.

Glass smashed somewhere and I looked up and saw what looked like a struggle going on in a room on the second floor: a man was trying to get out onto the fire-escape and they weren't letting him. Let me go, so forth — I suppose that if you turned any given apartment block in this city upside down and shook it you'd find the odd drug dealer or black market capitano with evidence he couldn't get rid of at short notice. I haven't done anything, so forth, and I felt a touch of queasiness in the stomach because when I was growing op I'd seen flies on a web and had watched them buzzing and buzzing as the spider darted from its lair and the delicious chill of horror had trickled down my schoolboy spine.

'Sergeant in charge, open this fucking gate, come on!'

The NCO heard the order this time and gave a shout and two of us went for the wooden bar and swung it back and got the gate open and I stood clear as a body of men came plunging through and split up and started climbing the fire-escapes against the wall of the building while I went through the gate and turned and held my revolver at the ready. Two men were bringing the civilian down, going against the stream; I suppose it was the quickest way out of die building with all that fuss going on inside, and when they'd got him as far as the gate I turned again and took up the rearguard in case he managed to break loose.

We took him to one of the vehicles half a block away; I think it was the prisoner transport van that had come with us from Militia Headquarters earlier. There was less light here and I left the escort party and took up station at the end of an alley, facing the street to watch for anyone attempting to escape; but the focus of action was still down there at the apartment block and nobody was looking in my direction so I turned and walked into the alley, the boots a bit on the loose side even though I'd pulled the laces tight; it's important in this trade that our feet are comfortable because sometimes we need to run and run flat out and if we' re not fast enough we can lose the whole thing.

That had been at 7:41 and it was now 8:20 and they wouldn't give it much more than an hour down there, Gromov and Belyak, and there was something I'd have to remember: there'd only been one way I could have got out of that place and as soon as they gave their minds to it they'd put Shokin, Viktor back on the A.P. bulletin board described as possibly wearing militia uniform.

They were there again, the lights.

The support man was driving cautiously and I liked that You could wipe out the front end of whatever you were driving on streets like this if you didn't watch it, clouds of steam and rusty water pouring onto the ice and the timing-gear pushed through the cylinder block, and in these boots I didn't feel like walking.

And that was the second time.

I edged the throttle down a fraction to pull up on the Trabant in front of me and watched the mirror. It was the second time the car behind had gone through a red light, oh quite possibly, yes, with so little traffic on the streets after the storm there wasn't much attention being paid to the lights, just slow down a bit and take a good look and off you go again if there are no police around; on the other hand it's the first intimation you get when a tracker comes up on your tail: he can't afford to stay too close and go through the intersections I with you but he can't afford to lose ground to a red light and watch you sail away.

All I could see from the profile of the vehicle behind me was that it was a private car, not a van or a truck or anything with emergency lights on the roof, unlit or otherwise.

But you said you weren't worried about lights in the mirror.

I wasn't.

You gave us all that bullshit about watching mirrors with the ritualistic devotion of a priest, just because you thought it sounded good, and now -

Bloody well shuddup.

There was no way that anyone could have tracked us last night from the Velichko killing-site to the hospital without my knowing, but I used the throttle again and fought the ruts and pulled alongside the Trabant and signalled the driver to stop. His offside wing caught the side of my door as he slewed on the snow but it wasn't more than a bump, and then we were stationary side by side and our windows were down and we started talking.

'I've got some lights in the mirror,' I told him.

They were still there in the distance, but the car had stopped.

The support man was watching me, a stubbly face with unsurprisable eyes under a black leather ski-cap. 'Was he there before I intercepted?'

'He could have been.' there'd been more traffic, earlier.

'He's not mine,' the support man said. 'I got there clean.' there was a note of censure in the tone, as if he'd just noticed I hadn't washed.

'Where's the safe-house?' I asked him.

'You peeling off?'

'I might have to.'

Our engines idled, echoing from the wall alongside.

'Two kilometres east of here, and you're on the river. It's the wreck of a coaster, single mast with four deck hatches and the starboard bow stove in, the M. V. Natasha, but you can't make out the name very well. She's on the west bank, three berths down — that's south — from No. 7 Granary, Novosibirsk, black clapperboard with the Russian flag painted over the main doors, recently done.'

He waited, watching me, his eyes in the shadow of his cap.

'Vessels on either side of the wreck?'

'Another coaster, north, and a dredger with a list on it. Place is a graveyard.'

The lights were still in the mirror.

'All right. Stay where you are, and if I'm wrong I'll be back and we can keep going. Give me half an hour.'

'You need help?'

'No.'

It had better be done solo.

I knew what had happened, now, and the chill of the night air was creeping through the skin and reaching the nerves, because it might not just be a case of throwing off the tracker and resuming operations without him. Meridian had been compromised, and even Ferris could be in hazard. It was perfectly true that no one could have tracked us through this city last night, that we'd been absolutely clean when Roach had picked us up at the hospital. But the lights back there were still in the mirror, and now I knew why.

There must have been surveillance on the Skoda when I'd picked it up twenty minutes ago, and they'd started tracking me, were behind me now. But they couldn't have found it there by chance on that patch of waste ground in a city this size: they'd been surveilling this car since I'd brought it away from the safe-house, and before then; they'd been surveilling it when it had been standing outside the apartment block after Roach had left it there for me to use, and before then: they'd tracked Roach to the rendezvous at the hospital, must have got onto him when he'd started out to meet us there. The thread went back, and back, as far as the unthinkable.

I looked across at the support man.

'Change that,' I called to him above the drumming of the engines. 'Don't wait for me. Get away from here and watch your tail. 'He'd caught my tone, lifted his head an inch like an animal scenting. 'Signal the DIF as soon as you can,' I told him. 'Make sure the line's not tapped. Tell him I think your whole support base could have been blown, and tell him to look after Roach, if it's not too late.'